“So I could listen to you talk about it.”
A fluttering weight dropped into her belly—and once again, she was halfway across the couch before realizing she’d moved. Drawn to him in a way that couldn’t be denied or explained. Slowly, like a middle schooler might do, she slid her open palm over the couch cushion toward Jonas, afraid to breathe, afraid he’d think it was a bad idea.
When he slowly lowered his hand to Ginny’s and knit their fingers together, cool twined with warm, electricity raced up her arm and Jonas’s nostrils flared. But he didn’t take his hand away—and they stayed that way until sleep snuck in like a bandit and claimed her.
Ginny woke with a start the following afternoon to find Roksana doing a walking handstand from one end of her room to the other. The previous night came back to her on a roaring current and she sprang into a sitting position, searching the room—futilely—for Jonas. Of course he wouldn’t still be there in the broad daylight, but the reminder of his sunlight allergy did nothing to stop a ditch from opening in her stomach and filling with disappointment.
The last thing she remembered before sleep claimed her around two o’clock in the morning was waking in a slump against Jonas’s hard yet welcoming shoulder. She recalled trying to sit up, clear the cobwebs of sleep from her brain and refocus on The Quiet Man unsuccessfully.
Some time later, she’d woken again while being carried in his arms from her sitting area to the bed. There were moments she recalled from childhood of being carried thusly, but this had been different. Her body had been lighter than air, kind of how she imagined it would be like to float in salt water in a sensory deprivation chamber. She’d kept her breathing even and pretended to be asleep, profoundly aware of Jonas’s lack of heartbeat beside her ear. Instead of laying her down in the bed right away, he’d paced for a while at the foot of her bed. Without him saying a word, Ginny could decipher his internal mutterings. They might as well have spoken out loud. I shouldn’t be here. She’ll remember none of this.
Finally, he’d lain her down in the bed—fully clothed. After rattling the knob to make sure her bedroom door was locked, he sat in the window staring out over Coney Island. As she drifted off to sleep, she sensed his gaze burning over her time and time again, until she’d lost the battle with not only exhaustion, but the safety she felt in Jonas’s presence. Surrendering herself to unconsciousness had never been easier with him watching over her.
“Hey!” Roksana hopped up on the foot of the bed and clapped her hands twice. “You are not a Victorian princess. Rise and shine.”
“I work nights,” Ginny complained. “Noon is early for me.”
She rubbed her stomach, which was decidedly bare between a studded bra and low rider jeans. “I was told this job included meals.”
Biting back a smile, Ginny climbed out of bed. “Do you want me to prepare you something or should we go get bagels and cream cheese?”
“Option two. And coffee.” Roksana leapt off the bed, shadowboxing as soon as her feet touched down. “Maybe we’ll get some action today, yes?”
Ginny paused in the act of choosing a dress from her closet to smile over her shoulder. “Yes, I can almost guarantee it.”
The slayer seemed to be holding her breath. “Really?”
“Oh yes. My dress making club is always action packed. There will be backstitching, hemming, maybe even some ruffled embellishment.”
“Very funny.” She flexed her fingers. “Dress making club. This is really a thing? You can buy clothes on the internet.”
“Is that where you buy yours?”
“Occasionally.” She fingered the strap of her bra. “I have to sort through a lot of ball gags and latex suits to find what I’m looking for, but it’s there.”
Ginny laughed. “I just never imagined a vampire slayer having a credit card.”
“I don’t have one. I steal Elias’s—”
When the slayer abruptly cut herself off, Ginny looked up from the mint green frock she’d chosen for the day. “Who is Elias?”
Roksana rubbed at the back of her neck. “Forget I said that. He’s no one.”
“Is he one of Jonas’s roommates?”
The other woman approached with what might have been a menacing expression, if she didn’t have two spots of color on her cheeks. “I told you nothing. You never heard that name.”
“What name?”
“Good girl.”
“Elias?”
“Ginny!”
She giggled at the slayer’s outrage. “You can relax. I won’t say anything.” Her thumb traced the curved top of the hanger. “Maybe Jonas will tell me himself one day.”
“Don’t get your hopes up. He’s the strictest follower of the rules.”
“I guess he has to be, right?” Ginny moved past Roksana and laid the dress out on her bed. “Since he teaches the Silenced how to follow them.”
Roksana was silent for long moments. “He told you that?”
Ginny nodded, silently brimming with pleasure that he’d confided something important in her and vowing she’d never, ever make him regret it. “I’m going to go take a quick shower. Then we’ll go get bagels.”
She breezed from the room before the slayer could respond, though she could feel Roksana’s interested gaze following her from the room. Within half an hour, Ginny had showered, dried her hair and thrown on the green dress, receiving a grunting approval from Roksana. She called downstairs to the office to make sure Larissa had woken up for her shift, breathing a sigh of relief when her stepmother answered the phone albeit in a weary tone. After a reminder to Larissa that she’d be at her dress making club that afternoon, she snuck Roksana downstairs and out the back entrance of the house.
Roksana had drunk an extra-large coffee, scarfed her bagel and started on the second half of Ginny’s breakfast by the time they reached the club.
Embrace the Lace Dressmaking Endeavors met once a week in the basement of the Our Lady of Solace Catholic Church. It smelled like stale coffee, dust and there was a distinct lack of fresh air, but Ginny found the whole operation glorious. If she could pick one sound to hear for the rest of her life, it would be sewing machines chirping away, set against the cutting of fabric. Women with pins in their mouths and sketchpads at the ready? It was heaven. Perhaps the members of the club hadn’t welcomed her with open arms, but because that was the norm for Ginny, she was able to look past their discomfort over her presence and enjoy the atmosphere.
Ginny couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been fascinated by dresses. Not so much the act of looking pretty as the sensation of feeling feminine. Maybe even a touch dramatic. One couldn’t sweep from the room after a witty rejoinder in a pair of jeans. Dresses—bright ones, specifically—were a tale to tell. In pleated pink tulle, she could be delicate, like Audrey Hepburn. In sunset orange, she could be bold, like Sophia Loren.
Ginny couldn’t remember a lot about her mother, mainly just blurry memories, muted sounds and the few stories she’d been told by her father. Her favorite one was that her mother used to dance around the kitchen to the Foo Fighters with Ginny on her hip. Her least favorite story was the one about her mother going out for diapers and never coming home. More than once, she’d caught her father reading the note Ginny’s mother had left behind, folded beneath his shaving cream can, but she’d never asked the contents.